By Christian Thomas
As users drift away from the microblogging site formerly known as Twitter, serial entrepreneur Isaac Hayes III is hoping to convince Black journalists gathering in Atlanta to give his new social media platform a try.
Hayes, who also founded the social media platform Fanbase, said growing misinformation and racist content on X convinced him there was room for another alternative.
“I felt that Twitter (now X) had lost its North Star on what it really was, which was a place of information in a news hub where people can really find out what’s happening.”
Researchers have documented a rise in hate speech on X since Elon Musk bought the company in 2022. Musk cut staff responsible for content moderation and loosened some of the platform’s restrictions on speech.
A 2025 study found that weekly hate speech on X remained about 50% higher after Musk’s takeover than in the months before it. As the platform changed, its audience shrank: U.S. daily active mobile users fell 23% between November 2022 and February 2024, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
“I remember a time where you could type in a very generic word just to find out about that subject,” Hayes said. “You can no longer do that on X without running smack dab into misinformation and racism.”
But, as a tech entrepreneur focused on changing the social media landscape, Hayes leveraged this challenge to create his new social business venture, Spark.
Spark is a microblogging news alternative to apps like X and Threads. It combines features found on X, Threads, Instagram and Citizen, like vertical video livemaps and breaking news alerts called “breaking badges.”
As layoffs, DEI cutbacks and mergers shrink newsrooms across the country, Hayes hopes Spark will open an opportunity for journalists to build their audiences and better monetize their content.
Spark is still in beta testing, but Hayes said eventually it will earn revenue through in app-advertising and users can earn a part of that ad-revenue.
“We’ve seen a lot of Black journalists lose their jobs over the last year,” Hayes said. “I wanted to create something that allowed the dawn of news creators in many different sectors.”
The timing of the beta testing was intentional: NABJ is in town.
“NABJ is where people will start to be able to use Spark, and we’ll get that initial feedback,” Hayes said. “We wanted to have it ready for NABJ because, who’s better to give a news creator product than a bunch of amazing Black journalists that happened to be in Atlanta for a few days?””
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